In some environments, information technology (IT) employed is serviced by different parties. This information technology can comprise computers, software, peripheral devices and an internet connection, for example.
Thus, for example in a retail establishment with existing information technology, additionally services of another company can be offered, for instance by additionally operating a postal agency or a lottery outlet. For such services, usually the proprietary software of the other company is at least required.
Installing the software of the other company on a computer provided for the retail business is often out of the question, since in some cases it can be accompanied by a security risk.
Instead, one of the computers provided for the retail business could be connected via the Internet to a web service provided by a secure, central server of the other company. However, on the one hand, this usually requires the computer to be configured in a complex way. The knowledge required for this is maybe not available in-house and sending specialist personnel to do the configuration is cost-intensive. On the other hand, using a web service does not allow any offline operation. In other words, the services cannot be provided if the server goes down or access to the internet fails.
Therefore, in order to guarantee uninterrupted operation, conventionally two complete computer systems along with peripherals are operated. However, this is also accompanied by high costs and takes up additional space.